Blackstone

Great story, well acted, well written. Believable sets and locations. Enough intrigue and sub-stories to keep things interesting. Politics, corruption, and the struggle of the underdog. All good stuff. Then it falls apart because of the camera work. Every single scene shot with shaky hand-held camera and jerky zoom. The end result is a production that looks like it was professionally cast, written and produced, then turned over to a high school class with a cheap camcorder to film. Oh, the shots are clear enough...once your eyes adjust to the constant jerking around. There is a place for hand-held shots. A few of them, scattered here and there, can be a great thing. But for the entire production? Please. Invest in a tripod and a trolley.

Understand something. I'm not epileptic. Never have been. Could play VirtualBoy hours on end and never get ill. But this show, like with too many productions these days, don't understand how annoying jerking the camera all over the place is. Imagine talking to a person, looking in their face, reading them, but they're quickly swaying back and forth. Won't keep watching. It's broken. Might not even be a bad show. I won't know. Story-wise, it seems decent enough. Not being native, I can't tell you how much of this is theatrical silliness or how much is egregiously "incorrect" to their culture. Regardless... they messed up with the cameras here.

Sad they took it off netflix, it's a pretty solid show and there's not many that delve into the life of living on a native reserve.

I'm pretty sure their official website allows you to watch it for free. So give it a watch, it's worth the time.

I found this series very entertaining. It's nice to see a show about Native Americans where they portray the lead characters and not simply backdrops. They're not simply stereotypes of Native Americans either. The writing is very true-to-life. The language is a bit rough swearing-wise, but that's the way a lot of people talk, even non-Natives. The acting is totally believable. The directing is excellent. It's kind of like a Native American soap opera, but much less melodramatic. The story lines are very interesting to follow. It would be nice to get this here in the States. It definitely deserves more stars.

I really wanted to watch this series, but I literally could not tolerate the nauseating camera work. Why film directors ever choose this approach is beyond me. Don't they realise that by shaking the camera all over the place, you instantly alienate every single audience member with notion sickness tendencies. Sucj a strange model trend in cinematography.